The fate of Hellboy lies in the hands of both his comic creator Mike Mignola and director Guillermo del Toro, but who will be first to pull the trigger? Del Toro, after all, has hinted again and again (even in Hellboy II: The Golden Army) that our hero would meet an untimely demise, but that's not exactly what Mignola has in mind just yet. In an interview with MTV, Mignola talked about his concern that the character could be killed off before he's had a chance to say goodbye:

Advertisement

"The problem is, what del Toro's talked about to me is that ‘Hellboy III' would be the end of Hellboy," Mignola said. "And here's where we have the big conflict. My version of Hellboy in the comics is a finite story, but it's going to take me 15 years to get to the ending. If he makes Hellboy III and it's the death of Hellboy, I'm left doing the comic going, ‘But I'm not done yet.'

15 years might seem like a stretch, but Mignola does have some time to get to the end of Big Red before the movie version meets his end. Del Toro is working on the epic undertaking that is The Hobbit (which is still in pre-pre-production), and it would probably be at least four years until del Toro can even think about another Hellboy. So there's plenty of time for Hellboy's kids and eventual demise to play out in Mignola's pages. The prolonged work on The Hobbit might even give everyone enough time to change their minds and keep everyone's favorite blue-collar demon hunter alive. We think that Mignola deserves to have the final say in how Big Red goes (having, you know, created him), and I'm sure del Toro will take that into consideration on the third film. Let's hope studio pressure doesn't step in and ruin the great balance between these two minds. But what if the studio doesdecides to kill of Hellboy because it would make for a fitting ending to a trilogy?

Advertisement

"That will be between me, del Toro, and my therapist," Mignola laughed. "I'm still raising Hellboy. I'm not done with the character yet."